David Avrin - Customer Experience Keynote Speaker and Consultant [Customer Loyalty]

David Avrin talk about his book “why customers leave and how to win them back”. On this episode, Nick and David talk about how inflexible policies are bad for business, and the importance of balancing efficiency with effectiveness.

Nick Glimsdahl 0:07

Hello, everyone, my name is Nick Glimsdahl. And I want to welcome you to the Press 1 for Nick podcast. I’m excited to introduce you to David Avrin. David is a keynote speaker consultant on customer experience and strategy brand development. He’s also a five-time author. And his most recent book is titled Why customers leave and how to win them back, which is what we’ll talk about most of the time today. David has worked with organizations across what 24 countries I believe, David, what I said and counting and counting you 25 as soon as that next person calls, yeah, what you know, I told my wife, I said that, I realized I was in Toronto, Canada, and I’m based out of Denver, Colorado, and I’m in Canada. And um, and she asked me how it went, we were on the phone, and I said, it was great, the audience been great. And I said, You know what, I just realized, I’m an internationally renowned speaker, just the fact that somebody in another country liked me even just one person. I am de facto internationally renowned. So that’s my story. And I’m sticking to it. Nice. My goal now is to find 24 random people in different countries to at least say hi to me. So I can. I’m known in 24 countries exactly right. This is where we, we play with what we have, Nick? I am going to learn a lot from you, I think from this podcast. Right? What’s going on? Yeah, so the first question I have, you know, before we talk about the rant, which is the book why customers leave and how to win them back out, how did you get into customer service and customer experience? You know, it was an interesting sort of a journey. I spent 20 years teaching and talking and writing books about marketing and branding. How do you stand out? In a very competitive marketplace? We’re in a kind of an interesting time. Everybody’s good. Right? If you weren’t good, you’d be outed pretty quickly on social media, Yelp and TripAdvisor and rotten tomatoes, and Glassdoor. It’s an interesting time because the internet outs underperformers, right? And so I spent years and years working with organizations traveling the country writing books I wrote, it’s not who you know, it’s who knows you and I wrote visibility marketing, it was all about how do we describe ourselves in a way that people recognize our differentiation. And what I came to recognize in recent years was, what we say about ourselves, well, while important, was becoming less and less effective in terms of differentiating marketing, because we’re kind of getting numb to the claims of quality and commitment and caring and trusted people. And the shift and we’ve all seen it is that what other people say about you, is more important today than what you say about yourself, before you go to a restaurant, you’re going to go look them up on Yelp or something else. Right before you you go to a movie, you’re going to look up the ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, it doesn’t mean it’s going to drive every decision. But what other people say about you is so important, and the things that they post online, are forever and ever and ever. And so that was sort of the the the research that I began that led to the book, why customers leave and how to win them back was what are the things that are driving people away? What are the things that we do as business people that are inadvertently frustrating our customers? Because I think everybody’s working hard. Everybody’s trying to be good at what they do. But sometimes in our effort to be structured and predictable in process, and here’s how we’re going to do it. We are inadvertently frustrating our customers. Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, when anytime that I as a consumer, I always try to think of it from the consumer’s perspective, right. It’s great to have technology and process. But if the consumer doesn’t like it, that means that they don’t like it, which means that they’re not going to stand in line, which means that they’re not going to buy your products. But anytime that I go look for a product. And let’s say the last thing I was looking for was wireless headphones, or earbuds, right? I went to Amazon, I started looking at reviews where people are saying I’d go to blogs and saying top 10 wireless headphones, and I’m reviewing people who have reviewed the product. And I have no idea who they are.

David Avrin 4:13

Yeah, there is no truth detector online. So Nick, you make a great point. However, it’s pretty influential, isn’t it? If there’s if you know you’ve got 100 choices, you’re only really going to consider the top five, that combination of great score and price. Right? Because once again, there’s such a plethora of options, products, services doesn’t matter. There’s others who do what you do for everybody listening and watching. And, and there’s other great choices. Right? I was doing another interview and somebody said, which is probably the easiest question, I think on a podcast. So your book is called why customers leave Dave, why do customers leave? You know what, here’s why they leave? Because they can. Right? I mean, honestly, it’s not and I’m not even suggesting that customer loyalty is dead. It’s just a lot harder to earn and a lot harder to keep. Because it’s so easy to leave you. Right in most of us, we just go to the next one. Because Because we can’t here, here’s an example. And I think I talked about it in the book. So I live just south of Denver. And I was um, I was turning on my sprinklers I live out in the burbs here in Castle Rock, I’ll return my sprinklers for the year. And somebody’s gone through with an air air Raiders or whatever, it broke some of the sprinkler heads and they’re shooting straight up in the air. And I look at it, I keep saying I keep telling my wife, I’m gonna fix it. I’m not gonna fix it. So I went on Craigslist. And I found people to do sprinkler repair. And I call the first one on the list. And I got a voicemail. And I said, I’m not working. I’ll call you when I get back. Here’s the question. Did I leave them? Did I leave a message for now to Jan? No, not a chance, we just call the next one. And it’s not that he didn’t deserve a chance. Not that I was being mean, it’s just so easy just to call the next one, right? It’s one of those things, what drives people away, not being able to get ahold of you? Right, right. And that will continue to happen. It’s just just not the sprinkler person. It’s the plumber, its electrician, it’s anybody that everything we do. If we can’t reach a real person or something or way of getting what we want when we want it. We just go on to the next one. Because it’s just so easy to do. Yeah, yeah. Inside the book. One thing that you talked about that that you break down, and I kind of mentioned at the very beginning, how it is a rant, how you kind of are talking about different stories throughout how what you’ve done and what you’ve seen, but it’s why the things that you know, one of them is don’t be hard to reach. And I just kind of open up the book just real quick, but you know, it throughout the every single chapter, it’s why do you do it? Why we hate it in a better approach? It makes so much common sense. But why are people not looking at the things and maybe even, you know, looking at what they they’re doing and maybe taking a walk or run in the customer shoes, and take a look and saying, Hey, we could do this better a little bit. Or maybe I’m going to learn from from the person that I called, who is the sprinkler sprinkler company, and maybe I’m going to find a way to have an answering service or some sort of chat service that is available 24. Seven, exactly. But there was there was sort of method to the madness in terms of the structure of the book, as I’m writing it. I’m realizing early on that it was kind of a rant and the things that kind of frustrate me. But I thought what’s the purpose of writing a book if you just complain about the things that are frustrating to customers? So the first thing I did at the end of every chapter is I said, Here’s why you do it. So I sort of let everybody off the hook saying I understand the business rationale behind your policy. But here’s why we hate it. Right. And then of course, here’s a better approach was not only diagnostic, but it’s also prescriptive. And

it really comes down to this. It’s like, why is this getting worse? I mean, Nick, if we’ve been talking about this for 20 or 30 years, providing good service, we everybody gets it, how could it possibly be getting worse, and I’m going to tell you why is because there’s so much that’s out of our control. We can’t control the economy, we can’t control pandemics or government regulations, we certainly can’t control our competitors. So as business owners or entrepreneurs, we work really hard to try and control what we can. And if we can design our customers journey, like here’s where they’re gonna find out about us and research. And then here’s how they’re going to contact in an order and customize and, and deliver and pay. If we can have a greater level of predictability of our customers behavior, right, then we can have greater level of predictability of revenue and profit, we can budget for that we can plan. Here’s the problem. Your customers have never read your employee manual. They don’t know how they’re supposed to do it. They just know how they want to do it. And sometimes we get a little bit myopic. We kind of turn internally, like here’s how it’s supposed to happen. And what happens is we get rigid, like this is the way we do Yeah, what can I get that? Sorry? No, sorry. Just know what we do. Like you get a young woman she’s she’s at the restaurant with her girlfriends. They’re having lunch, and she orders a chicken Caesar salad and says to the waiter, can I get out? Can I get shrimp instead of chicken? I see you got shrimp on Sorry, no substitutions. It’s an easy answer. Why? You know why? Because he doesn’t want to figure it out. Because the cook doesn’t want to do it. And you know, who doesn’t care what the cook wants to do? Oh, yeah, everybody. But we have this knee jerk reaction. Just sorry. We don’t do that. You know, it’s like, well, you don’t know. You don’t know when when the delivery is gonna show up. Uber knows where they’re exactly right here. They’re at this intersection. They’re gonna be here in 11 minutes. Why can’t we do that? Not necessarily a fair comparison. But it’s the reality today. Right? Your version of Uber, right? You don’t have to be the Amazon of your industry. Now better than you are today. But you also have to remember this is this is the core of my message is you got to remember that the customers are changing in a really big way. And I’ve still heard speakers recently, who will say listen, the markets will change and technology changes but you know, it doesn’t change people. And I’m like, Are you out of your freaking mind. We were all, like I asked audiences, they said, anybody notice that your customers are a little more impatient, a little more demanding than recent years, they because we all are, you know, when we just sort of expect, we’ve always wondered what we want when we want it today, we kind of expected and then during the pandemic, we’ve learned that we can have anything delivered to your house. Yeah, how has that changed? It’s changed a lot. So those who aren’t flexible, once again, we talked about why customers leave, if you weren’t flexible, if you weren’t accommodating, you’re gonna you’re gonna lose the customer, and you’re gonna lose the lifetime value of the customer. When you could have easily said, yes, there’s something you know, it’s a little bit extra work, take a little bit Sure. Click customers love that. Love it. Yeah, but but they, but the the total lifetime value of that customer is invaluable to the organization. Huge, but if the employee is not measured on it, right, if they’re not measured or focused on what their customers were, the metric is, then they’re going to just put their horse blinders on and just do best effort.

Because it’s a great point. It’s a great point, what they do is they do their job, because they have a mistaken belief, and this is management’s problem. Their job is to do their job. And really, it really is their job is to build the business. Let me give you another quick story. So I met Chicago O’Hare Airport, and I’m one of the concourse is in between flights. And I’m having lunch and I’m sitting at the railing at one of these restaurants facing out to the Congress for people watching. And really close to me off to the right is the hostess, it’s one guy comes up ask her a question. She shrugs and shakes her head, he leaves in frustration, next person asked the same question. leaves in frustration a woman goes up there, she says no, sorry. Now, what was the question being asked that you will not be surprised to learn that it’s the number one question asked at airport restaurants. And the question was, do you have a seat next to an electrical outlet? Right? Brady’s got to charge their stuff. And so I sat there, they probably lost $800 in business, just in the 45 minutes I sat. Now here’s the question, though, because it get back to your point about what her job is. Do you think she passed that information on to her manager? Nanshan? No, because it’s not her job. And here’s the thing, and I’m not criticizing her because she was awesome. I watched her cuz I thought, well, that’s an easy out, she was really good. But in her mind, her job was to get people seated, move the tables. So as opposed to building the business. Now, I would assume by this point, they’ve probably wired up all the tables and everything else, certainly, as the airports were closed, whatever to do that. Yeah, but it is a mindset is the mindset is, is our job is to, to please the customer to to be remarkably easy to do business with. I hear a lot of speakers talking about creating wow moments, that’s customer experience that is creating well. But how many of us have business models that lend themselves to wow moments, sometimes just being remarkably easy to do business with just being able to reach a real person? Simply if you wanted to do so getting an answer to a question whether it is through a chatbot or an FAQ or something, but easily and simply. Instead, we train drive people to do business to make it easier for our staff. Right, yeah, it comes down to solving their problem in the least amount of effort possible. Yeah, Lisa, for them. Yeah. But there’s an opportunity, isn’t it during any challenging times or the pandemic and others to look inward and saying, How can we sharpen our saw? How can we be better than we work? Can we take a nine step process that we created, that makes sense as profitable, and reduce it to a six step process? Right, because that’s easier for them. Because sometimes just getting what you want quickly, getting in and out quickly, or the fear of not getting it quickly? drives people away? Yeah, what? That’s a great transition. So in chapter three, you mentioned there’s a title, it’s titled automation kills loyalty. And he kind of talked about this a little bit prior, but you talked about the importance of balancing the efficiency with the effectiveness. So right. I talked about that mostly in terms of communication, because people will say, Listen, I can send out and you see this with marketing people at time, I can hit 200,000 people with an email blast. Really? How many? How many of those Do you read how much crap goes into your your trash or spam thing every day, but they Pat themselves on the back? Because they look how efficient we were? And I always ask, yeah, but how effective were you? Yeah, you know, the standard response used to be because I’m old with direct mail was if you got a 4% response rate, that was profitability at that point, they’ll get a fraction, a fraction of a fraction of 1%. But they’ll say, look, we made $50,000 on the last mailing. And I’m like, and if you had taken the time to actually personalize each one of those, to some extent, you could have made $500,000 but all those people are now dismissing you because you were very efficient, but not particularly effective. Once again, it’s quite tough. summers leave. And the worst thing is, you know what, there’s that line that says the greatest predictor of future behavior is past behavior, right? So the people buy from you are the most likely to buy again. So those are the people that we spam. With, with emails 400 times a day, if you buy something on overstock.com, you’re guaranteed to get five emails a day forever. Right? Because somebody says, look at the analytics, and they’re the most likely to buy. So those are the people you piss off. Yeah. I love it. It’s crazy. JOHN from the book, it’s just a continued rant.

I got it. what’s what’s funny is I believe all this stuff, and my wife bless her heart. She’s absolutely beautiful and wonderful. And she is the worst sounding board for this stuff. Because nothing bothers her. She just kind of goes with the flow. And I’m the one who complains about about everything. I’m at Walmart, and I’ve got a shopping cart overfilling with with food, and they direct me over the manager to to self checkout. And I’m like, oh, sorry, I don’t work here. And I’m not trying to get demeaning. I’m horrible at it. Like,

the best for them, though.

It is what’s best for them when they say no, no, no, no, Nick, we give people a choice. Really. You have one staff lane with nine carts waiting and you have 22 self checkout. It’s not a choice. It’s social engineering. And so one of one of the other chapters in the book is about stop trying to make us do your job. And I understand it’s better for them. But what they’re not factoring in is that somebody gets so frustrated. I’m just going to go to the other place that doesn’t make me do this. Yeah. You know, I’m going through self checkout. I’m horrible. And it just, I mean, there’s times I’ve literally left my food. One time I miss, I’m so embarrassed by this, but I got home. My wife’s like, you need help bring into the groceries. I don’t have any groceries. I think you want to get groceries. I said I did. She’s Where are they? They said they’re at the self checkout at Walmart. And she goes, did you leave them there? I said, Yeah, cuz I got halfway, I got so frustrated. Nobody was there to help me. And I just walked out. Now I know, I’m an idiot. But I’ve just like, please, somebody help a little stable gun that scans and these people like, look at me. I’m like shooting everybody with a Can somebody come help me. But no, did they pay you per hour per checkout? I don’t I didn’t get a 1099. I know you didn’t from them. But I don’t know.

But how many people are like you, David,

how many people are enough to check your profitability? Enough, right? Because most customers unhappy customers don’t complain, they just don’t come back.

That’s right. Because we don’t have

great if you’re, if you’re at Disney, you’ll pay whatever their prices are for a hamburger because there’s nowhere else to go. You’re already inside the gates. Yeah, the rest of us this is if there’s a message for you, for your audience as well. And business owners entrepreneurs, just always keep in mind that your customers have choices. Sometimes the choice not to buy from anybody at any point of friction that is along their journey, walk their journey, pretend you don’t know how it’s supposed to be. And if there’s anything that holds them up. Many of them are just going to be gone. And the greatest source of lost revenue, this is the most important thing I say, the greatest source of lost revenue in your business is the customer you never knew about. Right? Right. They drove by and they didn’t stop where they came in, they left because nobody engaged them or they called on the phone and they didn’t want to deal with your HR system. and navigate to find when somebody could have actually answered the phone. Or, or they went to your website, like you’ve got them to your website where you didn’t provide a phone number, contact form, like the evil like if there’s if there’s evil in this world, besides Yelp, which is really evil, is is a contact form with no phone number, and we just give them options. I don’t mind chatbots I don’t mind all those things, as long as there’s an option for bypassing that if you want but people’s like oh, no, it’s great. What’s up, everybody fill out the contact form. And they will capture their information. So we can market later on or or haven better? We’ll ask him some pre qualifying question. You know what, I just wanted to talk to somebody. I saw statistics that 87% of people will not fill out a contact form 87% I mean, at least have a chat feature, or at least have something if people don’t leave. It’s the same thing. Because the contact form is voicemail of the internet. Right? We talked earlier, we don’t leave a message. It’s like leaving a message because we don’t know if they’re gonna get back to us. There’s so much technology, there’s so much people, non people, whatever. Don’t make your people wait. But it’s because they weren’t putting in the right technology for the right reason. Yeah, where’s the balance? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, there’s I heard the story. quick transition heard the story of a of a grandma who are a newly new bride that kept cutting off the ends of the roast of the of the of the roast and putting in the oven and the husband’s like, why are you doing this? She’s like, Well, my grandma always done it. Right. So she kept asking up until she got to the ground on the ground was like she’s a grandma. You know? Why are you cutting off the ends To the turkey or the roast and she’s like, because the pan right, I got it right. And so the question I have for you, I think you mentioned it in chapter seven is why don’t we don’t want to do business your way. We want to do business our way. Right? It’s It’s so why why not customers? Get out of that status quo and kind of look at what they’ve always done? And maybe see if there’s a different way, what you’re asking the right question. The reason why they don’t is because what they do works, but it works for them. Yeah. But what they don’t realize this, and I’ll say, and I say this to audiences, organizations that I work with all the time when I consult, is I said, if your policies were created more than 13 years ago, understand I mean, which is essentially when the iPhone came out, right, that we’d like, let me think how much we’ve changed since then, it doesn’t mean that every policy or procedure is wrong. And most of them are probably fine. But when you realize what we’ve gotten used to, because all of us, no matter where you are in business, our greatest role is consumers. We’re all consumers. And we’re learning to do things differently. And so just because you have a process that works for you, and it works, if your AAA works, dude, I’m in your lineup, and you order here, and then you customize your burrito, and then you pay and you get your drink. And you sit down. It makes sense, right? How many of us have a business model that that’s simple, right, and even they have modified and enhanced and look at the line, they just keep revising and revising. So when I say we don’t want to do business your way, it’s sometimes it’s what you said is that we’ve had policies we just had forever. It’s just the way we do it. But other ones are that whole thing of shifting, like I go and I bring my luggage at the airport, and they you know, you carry a tag your own bag. I’m like, No, you’re better. You go ahead. Let me take you and I’m like, I don’t want I don’t want to learn and I sound so elite. I just want to say this is this bag has to get words going. Yeah, if I do this when my son was born, and they handed me the scissors, would you like to cut the cord? I’m like, No, I think you have more experience. Thank you. I mean, this is my turn. I just met him. And I really, really liked him. I don’t want to cut him right now. I’m just saying. But if you don’t like him, you might want to cut him later. Is that what you like? He’s actually he just turned 17 two days ago, and I want to cut him constantly. But that’s a whole nother conference. Now somebody happens to him, they’re gonna go back to this room. Right? Didn’t you say on a podcast that you were gonna hurt yourself? And now he’s 17? Yeah,

I want to hug him, I want to kiss him and I want to kill him. But but but your point is, and I think it’s an important one. We get really set in how here’s how we do it. And we’re that way because it works. Because we designed it. It really does work. And I give everybody credit. When I when I told you at the end of every chapter is, hey, here’s why you do it. It’s to give businesses credit. Nobody’s trying to piss off their customers. We’re just trying to make a living. We’re trying to we’re trying to do good work. But sometimes the way we used to do things or the way we do things now are a bit antiquated in the minds of our customers. And if they cause mean, how many businesses are optimized for speed of delivery, like, honestly, is probably one of the most important things is that convenience factor in the fact that we don’t want to wait even when we’re talking about going on Amazon or something. And when I look at multiple I mean, always will balance the rating and the price. But I also because I’m amazon prime, I look at the delivery date. And if one of them can get it to me tomorrow by noon, and the other one gets it to me in three days. And it’s around the same price. It’s not even a contest. Yeah. Because I want that instant gratification. Yeah, so it’s actually interesting. Yeah, it’s actually interesting because Amazon is now providing options. So it’s saying, Hey, we your Prime member, you can get it to eat to you tomorrow by noon. However, if you want it and you’re okay with waiting for three days or two days, we’ll give you an extra $3 credit. Yeah, it’s fine. Because what they are is their customer centric. customer centric says we understand our customers, we’re gonna talk about how we go from product centric, where which is our expertise is and what we do, we’re really good. We sell it to as many people as we can perfectly legitimate when everybody’s good, the opportunity to there being more customer centric, and it doesn’t mean customer focus, right customer focus, but customer centric is the point you made, which is we understand the changing world and lives and demands and pressures and expectations of our customers. And we try and align how we do business and how we deliver it and the speed and the options to how they want to buy it. And when we can make that alignment really well, then we’ve got a really good opportunity of not only surviving but but surpassing our competitors. Yeah, no, I love that, you know, in and thinking of it was in chapter 10. I think you talked about imagine every customer is a first time customer. Yeah. So how do you get your employees to have that perception? that i think i think i think you you asked that exact question. Yeah. What would you do if this was a first time customer, knowing that we never get a second chance to make a first impact? But sometimes we spent a lot of time on the acquisition part. And the servicing part, you know, I mean, we put so much effort into getting the new customer and a lot less effort on keeping them or keeping them happy. That’s right. But recognize that there’s an old line in business. And we’ve all heard it before this is we’re fired on the as providers were were fired on the last day of every month. And we’re hired on the first day of the next but every time they write a check, they’re saying, Yes, I want to keep doing business with you. And so we think about it as an epically b2b or b2c doesn’t matter that every time we engage with that customer, they’re asking consciously or unconsciously, what I want to do this again. And so if we have that mindset and recognize that our livelihood is dependent on that, we go back to that that wonderful hostess at the at the restaurant at the airport. The best way that we keep our jobs is to keep our customers really, really happy. And then you get this nonsense from guys like Richard Branson, and I know people could disagree with me. He says, Listen, you keep you treat your employees, right, they’re gonna treat your customers, right. One of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard in my life. And I’m not suggesting we don’t treat our week, of course, we treat our employees, right. But they don’t treat the customers, right, because they’re treated like they treat our customers, right, because they understand the importance of their customers and the needs of their customers and the buying habits. And right, of course, we treat our people well, but it doesn’t just, they’re not automatically know how to treat their customers, we have to talk to them. We have to teach them we have to we have to train. And we have to challenge him, because the scenarios are all different nowadays. Yeah, no, I think that’s a great point. It’s always good to hear that buzzword, that buzz phrase like treat your customers and your employees, right, and they’re gonna treat your customers, right. But if you actually stop and actually think through that, it doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen some very happy customers become or employees, because nothing was asked of them, who were horrible with their customers. Yeah, they’re really happy because their manager didn’t hold them accountable. I think that’s a good point, you know, when one thing you had mentioned was the importance for employees to own the customer problem. Like you can’t, you can’t just, you know, sit back and say, well, it’s not my problem. Why should I care about it? When that transfer might say it’s over? And where Don’t you love it when you’re at a retail place? And you ask somebody where something is, and they take you there?

None of this is rocket surgery. as we like to say, we’ve been talking about this for a long time. But, but I will also push the experience side, which is, how do your customers buy from you? How do they learn about you? How do they customize? And how often do we say no? More often than you think? Yeah, yeah. So I appreciate that. I wrap up every every podcast with two questions. Yep. So so no pressure. But the first one is what book or person has influenced you the most in the past year?

Nick Glimsdahl 27:47

And I’m sensitive question aren’t I like that? Yeah. And then the next one is if you could leave a note to all the customer service and all the customer experience professionals, and everybody would hear it voted say,

David Avrin 27:59

Okay, let’s go back. First one, most influential. I can definitely talk to book about books. But if you say in the last year you’re most influential this sounds so sappy is my wife is she went back to school, and she got her master’s at 51 organizational psychology, I had said to her, and we’re newly married second time around for both of us, I couldn’t be happier. And I said, Listen, it’s your turn, you raise your kids, what do you want to do? She says, you know, I’d love to go back and get my degree. So she goes back gets her undergrad degree and her master’s. She gets straight A’s all the way through that she got her master’s degree in organizational psychology and talk about influence influence was her work ethic and her focus, and her appreciation for the opportunity to do something to better herself. I mean, I was in the process of writing this book, and I’m literally complaining every day. Oh, and I got like, two more chapters. I gotta get done for my publisher. But she goes, I know, honey, and she’s quietly cranks out another 20,000 words. The fact that she just, you know, I’m the guy that, you know, you know, she she could have some, you know, break nine bones. And she’s like, I’m okay. Okay. And I’m like, I got, I got a paper here. Oh, I got hurt so bad, right. I’m the one who complains about everything. And she just, there’s my biggest influence. I think she just just a great work ethic, appreciating the opportunity to be better, and embracing it. So that’s the best for me. What was the second question? The second one is if you could leave a note to all the customer service professionals and or customer experience or both? What would it say? It would say it was to get over yourself? That you you’re I’m sure you’re good at what you do, but you haven’t created the cure for for cancer that tastes like chocolate. You’re not that good. Be willing to question how you do things. And because the way you do things isn’t the way it needs to be done. So what you’ve done it probably the way your competitors do it. But you Need to challenge your own assumptions that it’s the way things should be done. I know it’s a really long note. But you have to walk your customers path and ask yourself in every point of contact will leave you with this. Ask yourself at every point of contact on your customers journey, could we do it better or faster, or smarter, or more intuitively, or more simply, we’re more promotable, or with just with less friction. And most things you do are probably great. But there’s a few things that could literally change the game. Yeah, that’s a it’s a great way to, to end it. My listeners, you can connect with David averin, on Twitter at David averin, on LinkedIn at David averin. And you can also buy his book, why customers leave and how to win them back is new, everywhere and in lots of languages. And I will gram Instagram, it’s the real David ever pulled different characters. So there you go. That’s awesome. And I speaking of reviews, I will as of today, since I’ve read it, reviewed it and appreciated it, not just because you’re on my podcast, we’ll give it five stars. So people will see how great it is and leave a comment. But, David, thank you so much for your teaching. But what one thing real quickly is Yeah, this new initiative that I’ve been working on for a year. And I think it’s the most powerful work I’ve ever done, it’s sort of a morning huddle initiative that I would love you to take a look at. It’s a way to keep the conversation going in your organization every week for a year. And if you go to the website, customer experience advantage.com. And take a look at I would love to love to hear what you think about a customer experience, advantage calm and take, take 30 seconds and tell us about what that is. What it is, is actually it’s an internal engagement initiative. I’m a real big believer that some of the best ideas are crowd sourced in your own company. But, and we all know, sometimes we get these gems, these great ideas, but they’re always sporadic. But if you put that conversation on the calendar, every week, for 20 minutes, we’re gonna focus only on one new aspect of our customer and how we engage with them, but what’s changed with them? So I created this done for you model. It’s a seven minute video that I record every week. It’s not motivational. It’s challenging. It’s humorous, but it’s meant to spark a conversation. So I create a video every week for that seven minutes long, a little facilitators guide. And it’s meant to discuss internally, how do we do things and come to a decision,

here’s how we’re going to do that in the future. And in we’re already we launched in January, and we’re already in Mandarin Chinese, we’re already in Hindi for India, and we’re in Spanish as well. And it’s it’s the most rewarding work that I’ve done. And it’s very cool. The last thing I wanted to mention, which we had talked prior was how you’ve transitioned obviously, to the current circumstances, from physical keynotes, to virtual keynotes talking a little bit about that if somebody is interested in learning more about what you do. I appreciate that very much. You know, I’m a keynote speaker. I’ve spoken in 24 countries around the world, but of course, during the pandemic, and then hybrid, whatever afterwards, that some of us and I know that Nick feels the same that we’ve really made a commitment to doing it on a higher level. So we’ve all kind of turned into trainers to an extent. So I speak and I consult and I do virtual sessions, but I made a commitment to doing on a higher level. So I built my own virtual presentation studio. And it’s not about the technology, it’s about doing something better than a webinar or zoom fatigue. And, and is there so look me up on YouTube. There’s a video and I should have a probably a better a better link for that. Actually, I’ll give you a link and you can put it on your when you post this podcast for my two and a half minutes to show what I do virtually. But you’re kind of give me the opportunity to promote that. Yeah, absolutely. And he will send me the link and I will make sure that it’s up and available. But the title is no more boring virtual meetings. Customer Experience speaker David averin raises the bar. So if for some reason the link doesn’t work, you can at least search it and reach out to me. I’m just easy to find a David at David Evans comm you can send me an email, like correspond with people all the time, but but virtual meetings don’t have to be boring. And if you want to engage in real conversations with your team, but you don’t have the option of doing it. bringing people into a different city. There’s some good opportunities virtually. Great, David, thank you so much. Hey, thank you, bud.

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The Press 1 For Nick podcast is both educational and engaging, and each episode offers listeners a dynamic blend of insightful stories, best practices, and invaluable lessons.

Nick’s guests – each with a unique wealth of knowledge – include leaders from a variety of backgrounds and industries. Some of his guests include:

Customer service & customer experience leaders
A hostage negotiator
Award-winning authors
Home Depot’s Senior Director of Customer Care
Former VP of Disney’s Magic Kingdom
Lyft’s Head of Partner and Customer Engagement
Deputy Chief Veteran Experience Officer from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs

On every episode Nick asks his guest two questions:

What book or person has influenced you the most in the past year?
If you could leave a note to all the Customer Service and CX professionals, what would it say?

You can find all the podcast guests’ answers under their episodes below.

If all you want is the guests’ book recommendations, you can go here.

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